What Exactly Is Jim Sterling Reviewing? Not Much Apparently

[Kasz216]

Boutros said:

Kasz216 said:

Boutros said:

papflesje said:
Score-staring is also hugely annoying as a reviewer. You can pour your heart into writing a good piece and it often goes "omfg, only 90" ... /sigh

Let's get real here, it's not like he gave the game a 7/10.

He gave it 4/10!

He knew how people would react to that score. There was no objectivity at all in that review. I expect a lot more objectivity from a reviewer except the fun factor of course which can't really be objective.

Personally, I learned not to trust reviews much nowadays but a lot of people do and if Destructoid was not on metacritic, no one would care about that review.

Even Bioware directors said FFXIII was at the bottom of their list because they read some reviews and were not impressed with the game.

http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/03/16/bioware-head-ff-xiii-quot-on-the-bottom-of-my-list-right-now-quot.aspx

I mean come on! We all know FFXIII is good enough if you like RPGs in general.

Plus, when you read his review, I have a really hard time understanding how his arguments justifies the score. He's just whining and complaining about insignificant stuff. It's just trolling at it's best. He's not even the one who made the preview and the guy who made the preview loved the game so far. They just want hits. I think the facts speaks for themselves.

I'll just ignore Sterling from now on.

/rant

He wasn't objective... because he didn't change his score based on how people would react.

Do you and I have different definitions of objective here?

 

I'm not sure I want to get in a philosophical argument here but I think things like graphics, music, story and even gamplay should be evaluated with a more objective view point than things like the fun factor for example. I mean the guy can ask other reviewers at destructoid what they think of the graphics, the music, the story and the gamplay a little like what vgchartz is doing with their review.

I, for instance, disliked The Dark Knight but I can still see how everything about the movie was awesome. I would still give the movie a good score because I know how to put personnal stuff aside and judge something with a more objective view point.

And I know you're going to tell me that objective can be different from one person to another. Then I wouldn't know what to tell you lol

I guess you have to compare stuff with other things in order to get a more objective view point.

Uniformity =/= objectivity.

No reviewer is currently objective... and due to that... the ones who aren't uniform are of MUCH greater value.

For example, take a look at the Wii collection and some games that get downright awful scores... yet look how popular they are... objectivly, a lot of them probably would score higher then Final Fantasy games would.

Look at movie reviews.  Movie reviewers have MUCH more stringent criteria.  They go to school specifically to learn about films so they can know enough about them to be objective in reviews.

Roger Ebert can find a movie he dislikes but give it 5 stars if he thinks it's good.  Gene Shalot can like that same movie and give it 2 stars.

Objectivity is nothing more then shutting out the biases you may have and giving a fair evaluation based on the history of the medium your reviewing.  Often times you are still going to reach different conclusions then other people.

The fact that review scores are all so closely crowded together is actually a sign of the LACK of objectivity.  Because your not really reviewing the game anymore... your reviewing what you think other people will review the game at... which leads itself to bias itself just based on names.